Dad Body
by Breakinglight11
Summary: [Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse] Peter thought that he'd done too much to screw up his old life. But Miles's faith in him made him wonder if maybe he had it in him to fix things after all.
1. Call, Not Text

_INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE:  
_ "Dad Body"

By Phoebe Roberts  
~~~

Even he knew better than to just show up. Not out of the blue, after so long without any contact. Not after what he did.

The memory of it— how badly it hurt, how much had been his fault —was almost enough to stop him in his tracks anyway. Or at least give him a hell of a pause. He broke her heart, after all. Let her down, wasn't there when she needed him. The woman he loved, that he'd promised to love for all his life, and he let her down.

But after everything that happened… something in him resolved to it, fixed on it. A huge part of it was Miles; the way the kid had looked to him, needed him. As a friend, as a mentor, as somebody to show him the way. That somebody could have that kind of faith in him shifted something in him, something that had been laying in a crumpled heap of stale pizza and sadness for the last several years.

And then, there'd been seeing Mary Jane. Of course she wasn't his Mary Jane, he didn't forget that; she was a dozen years younger than his, if he could even still call her that. But that made it even more wracking somehow, to see her how she looked before everything had gone to hell between them. And the way she'd carried herself, gracious and composed even with the fresh grief glittering in her eyes, gutted him with the bright blade of everything he'd lost—a Mary Jane who still loved Peter Parker, and had loved him until the day he died.

He couldn't just let that go anymore. Not after that moment, and not after Miles had believed he could do better.

He typed out the beginnings of a text message, then stopped. "Idiot," he growled, then touched her name to make the call.

It rang three times, to the point where he began mentally composing the voicemail.

 _"Hey, MJ. It's me. Can we—?"_

 _"Hey, MJ. It's Peter. I don't know how to say this—"_

 _"Mary Jane, it's Peter… Peter Parker. Please don't hang up—"_

He was startled to hear her voice come through. "Peter?"

He breathed out. "Hey. MJ. Hey."

He braced himself for— he wasn't sure what. Annoyance. Disdain. But at worst she was cool, polite. More than anything, she sounded confused. It had been forever since they last spoke. "Is— everything all right?"

"Yeah. Yeah— it—" He considered explaining the events of the last few days, but no sensible words would come. "It is now."

"I'm sorry?"

He scrubbed a hand down his face. "I know— I'm sorry. I know it's been a while. But— if you're not busy— if it's okay with you—"

"Peter," she cut through his rambling. "What's going on?"

He heaved in another deep breath. "Can we talk?"

She was quiet so long he almost thought the connection broke.


	2. Flowers

He tried to put himself together a little, before he went over. Threw on the one suit that still fit, even figured out how to get the travel iron hot enough to press the shirt collar. Wasn't great, but at least Aunt May wouldn't be rolling over in her grave. It wasn't until he was passing a store on the way over— not even a florist, just a grocery store —that he thought to pick up flowers. Not roses, that would be a little too presumptuous, but the pink daisy-looking ones seemed inoffensive. He wasn't terribly well versed in flower language, but in the absence of anything that said "sorry for wasting the best years of your life," he supposed they'd have to do.

He used the web shooter to ring the bell. She used to get a kick out of that, way back when, letting him appear on the street in just the right insouciant pose. But that wasn't the real reason this time; the web gave him a little distance from the door. Going right up to the threshold was a bit more than he could handle.

She hadn't seen much of him in a while, and when she had, there hadn't been… quite so much of him. Recent events had made him painfully aware that he wasn't exactly in perfect fighting trim, and he wasn't sure of her feelings on the dad body— particularly given how much he'd fallen short on the dad part. It hadn't helped to see an alternate version of himself, plastered on billboards fifty feet high, who had basically been everything a gal could ever want with probably like an eight-pack to boot. In that instant he found himself spinning out a dozen ways he didn't measure up, ways he'd let her down, didn't deserve to be there. All that, in the few moments before she appeared in the doorway.

Just the same, it'd been a while since he'd seen her— the her of this universe anyway. She didn't look exactly the same as the Mary Jane of Miles's reality, or the one of his most recent memory. But the way she looked then… great, of course; she always looked great, in that low-key effortless way that suddenly made him feel grossly self-conscious. But more than that, she looked like… like a life, a future, possibilities, so much it twisted his heart. But miracle of miracles, the way she smiled at him in that moment— as if she were actually glad to see him —gave him a surge of hope.

"Hello, Peter."

"Hey, MJ."

She accepted the flowers graciously enough, though it didn't take a spider sense to detect the note of confusion in her face. As she put them in water, he was suddenly distracted looking around her apartment— once their apartment, which he'd almost forgotten until this moment. God, it was weird, to see a place that felt like it should have been home but wasn't. Like how once they used to see each other naked, all the time, but weren't allowed anymore. It wasn't that different, he found, except perhaps a little neater, without the disarray of his things cluttering up the place. But, he noted with some dismay, it didn't feel as empty as he thought, or hoped, it would; there was a tennis bag hung on the coat rack, a ticket stub in the key bowl, a wall calendar scribbled over with events and appointments. She had her own life, of course, a life that had gone on without him.

He cringed in sudden shame at the thought. Why should he have any right to hope her life was reduced without him? He should be glad she was getting along, that he hadn't left her worse off after everything she'd gone through.

He noticed her noticing his noticing. "I like what you've done with the place," he murmured by way of explanation.

Her lip quirked. "Yeah. I cleaned it."

He'd almost forgotten that, how she could be funny in that deadpan that way. A laugh burst out of him, unexpected, a little too loud. He swallowed it abruptly, and she stood there beside the kitchen counter, regarding him.

"So…" he said at last, raking a hand through his hair. God, did he have even more gray than he did before going through the supercollider? "How you been?"

But she just shook her head, curls bouncing about her shoulders. "Peter," she said. "What is this about?"

He swallowed hard, throat tightening. "MJ…"

Her brows drew in. "I haven't heard from you in months now. And now you call me out of the blue, wanting to meet…" She gestured toward the vase. "With flowers? Did something happen?"

He had to laugh a little at that. "I'm Spider-Man. Something always happens."

Wearily she sighed. "So what is it this time? Time bomb? Clone saga? Some supervillain coming to take me hostage to use against you?"

"Oh, God." He dragged his hands down the sides of his face. "It might be easier if it was. That stuff— I know how to handle. This…"

She stared at him; he could see her exasperation mounting. "What, Peter?"

"MJ…"

Her voice started to break. "Jesus Christ, what?"

He ripped the words out of him like a knife from a wound. "I want to try again!"

She froze and stared at him, eyes as wide as dinner plates.


	3. Ready

Peter Parker had faced down Green Goblin, tangled with the Kingpin, gone toe-to-toe with several universes' versions of Doctor Octopus, but it took so much out of him to say those words, he almost swayed on his feet. But now that he'd started, he had to find it in him to see it through.

"What happened between us…" he began. "What I did to you… it's the biggest regret of my life. And Christ, do I know regrets."

Her brow furrowed and her lip curled, but he pressed onward.

"I know how I let you down. How I… shut you out—"

"Yes," she cut in suddenly. "You did. How could you do that to me?"

He winced, gritting his teeth. She stood, pacing around the narrow New York kitchen.

"I always tried to make things easy for you, Peter. Helped when I could, never asked you to choose between me and saving the world. I knew how much you had on you, and how much that meant to all the people you protect." She paused, and turned back to him. "But I thought you wanted a life together."

He stiffened. "Of course I did."

"Really? And what was that supposed to look like?" She crossed her arms over her chest. "If you were going to just… disappear… when I needed you? If you were going to stop talking to me?"

Peter's chin tucked, ashamed at the memories— of every ignored call, every too-late night. His left hand jammed into his jacket pocket, while the other toyed with the one web shooter on his right wrist. It gave him a place to look other than her eyes.

Mary Jane was watching him, head cocked to one side. "Or did you just fall out of love with me?"

He jerked hard enough to fire off a web that took out the coffee maker. If it weren't for his enhanced reflexes, it would have smashed on the kitchen floor.

Gingerly he replaced it on the counter, turning so that she couldn't see his expression. Jesus Christ, was that what she thought? "Mary Jane…"

"Is that it?" There was no accusation in her voice, no ire. As if she just wanted to know the truth, even if it hurt her.

"No. Of course not." He spun back, lips parted, breathless. "I still love you, MJ. I never stopped."

She did not seem reassured; in fact, a flicker of new pain crossed her face. "That actually makes it worse somehow."

He gaped. "How?"

"I guess loving me wasn't enough."

The guilt was a vice grip on his chest. He wanted to deny it, argue it— anything but let her believe that all this was because she hadn't been worth it to him. It had been his lacking, not hers. But what could he say? When the truth was that, no matter the reason… it wasn't enough.

"God," he breathed, shaking his head. "You must hate me."

"Hate you?" A laugh, short and bitter, broke out of her. "None of this happened because I stopped loving you, Peter. It would have been a lot easier if I had."

Everything inside him hitched at that. He'd never admitted it to himself, but a part of him was certain that she had stopped, that he'd killed what she'd felt for him with distance, silence, and unavailability. But if there was still something left of it, wasn't there something left to build on? Didn't that mean he had a hope?

He seized onto that thought with desperate intensity. "It was never easy. MJ, you don't know— how I've missed you. Every day… just had a gaping hole. It never got easier. I got used to it… but it was never okay."

Her gaze cast down, and he knew she was not unaffected. He dared to move in a little closer. "Did you miss me?"

She didn't look back. "I loved you since I was twenty years old. I planned to spend the rest of my life with you. I wanted you to be…"

She trailed off, but he knew well enough to finish it for her. "The father of your children."

She didn't deny it. "I miss you every day."

 _Miss_ , she said, not _missed_. He seized that like a lifeline to a drowning man. "It doesn't have to be this way."

"Peter…"

"If we both want to fix things, shouldn't we try? If we've both been unhappy, don't we owe that to ourselves?"

She pushed back a handful of her hair. "Peter, none of this matters."

He stared at her, a shock of ice coursing through his veins.

She spread her hands. "Even if we could work through the rest of it… I wanted a family. I still do. But if you don't… then it doesn't matter how much I miss you. It just won't work."

Peter steeled himself, then tossed out his last best reason. "You don't understand— Mary Jane— I think I'm ready."

She stared at him hard enough to bore holes. "What?"

He knew he had to lay everything he had out on the table. "When you first brought up kids, I was so scared. By the whole idea. Of being a parent while also being Spider-Man, while also being… me. Of having any more on me than I already had. I panicked."

"That's clear."

"But it wasn't that I didn't— it wasn't that I don't want—" He blew out, then tried again. "I'm not scared anymore. No— I am scared. It's not easy in the best of cases… for people who aren't Spider-Man. But I want everything with you, MJ. Life, home, a future… and kids." He kneeled in front of her, taking her hand in his. "And I can't be a coward anymore."

She stared at him a long time, then shook her head, quickly, roughly. "So… that's it? You've figured things out, and you want to be together again?"

"Something happened— it made me realize—"

She pushed back from the table and scurried across the kitchen. "There were lawyers, Peter! We signed papers and divided up property— we haven't even seen each other in over a year!"

He reached out to her, but she was a flurry of motion.

"You think you can just come in here, and— and say all the things I wanted to hear you say years ago? And that's going to just… fix everything?"

"No. No." He approached slowly, holding out his hands. "I know how badly I screwed everything up. I know how long it will take to make it up to you. But I love you, Mary Jane. So if you'll give me the chance… I want to make it up to you. I want to be a dad. Your kids' dad."

She turned her eyes up to him— filling with tears, and, perhaps, with hope. "Do you really?"

"I do." Ruefully he smiled. "Might as well, right? Since these days I've got the body for it."

The laugh burst out of her, as if it were the last thing in the world she'd expected. "Peter… what happened to you?"

He stood and sat across the table from her. Fingertips almost touching hers, he told her the whole story— Miles, the multiverse, all of it.


End file.
